The clear superiority of Max Biaggi and Aprilia at the Monza round of World Superbike was rendered futile by a severe decision by Race Officials. A ride-through penalty deprives rider and team of certain victory and heavily influences championship standings.

After the positive outcome of Race 1 with a second place finish behind an excellent Eugene Laverty, a place which in any case brought home important points to close the gap behind the ranking leader, Carlos, Checa, Max Biaggi started Race 2 determined not to miss out on this opportunity for victory.

In just a few laps Biaggi widened a gap behind him leaving his competitors to battle it out for the secondary positions. But a cut across the first turn by Biaggi in the eleventh round convinced the Race Officials to levy a ride-through penalty against the number one rider. This decision relegated Max to twelfth place, depriving him of a certain and well deserved victory. Max then ended with a courageous comeback in eighth place.


"At the moment I am feeling only great disappointment, for me and for the entire team. We prepared to the best of our ability and I think we showed that on the track. I have to accept this severe decision, blaming myself for not having been shrewd enough not to have touched that line. Now we have to regroup and focus on the next races. There is still a long season ahead".

This was the comment on a weekend which, in any case, saw the Aprilia Alitalia Racing Team confirming its strength as the reigning Champion team, entrusted to the leadership of Gigi Dall’Igna, Aprilia technical and sports director: "The judging officials are there to take decisions. It's our job to respect them and so we must accept the penalty which the judges enforced. However, we cannot keep quiet about the fact that, from a strictly sporting point of view, Max drew no time advantage from cutting the turn. A problem which forced Max to avoid crashing and return to the track at 330 km/h: a very difficult condition also in trying to avoid a stripe painted on the track. Our disappointment is made even more bitter in consideration of the work that the entire team did in order to perform as best as possible for this round. Now we'll continue to work hard – concluded Dall’Igna – as we have always done, in order to keep this championship open until the end”.

An unfortunate weekend for Leon Camier as well who, after finishing Race 2 with an insignificant eighth place, started off very strong in Race 2, taking position in second place behind Biaggi. The Englishman defended this position with authority until the seventh lap when a slide in the second Lesmo curve took him out of the race.

“Start was good, first corner was good, I felt good - said Leon - I got past a couple more to move up into 2nd and everything was fine. I wasn’t particularly pushing, just trying to get everything to flow and then in Turn 6 I let the brake off mid-turn and the front folded. I have to say sorry to all of my team. A podium was definitely on the cards, which would have been a great end to a couple of races where we’ve had nothing but bad luck. We’ve just got to look ahead to Miller at the end of the month and hope our luck changes.”